This afternoon when I clicked on our  members page, I noticed with pride, that our ranks have surpassed the 1,000 member mark.

I would like to personally congratulate the leaders and employees of Dryhootch for achieving this milestone.  Although it is just a number, I think that it stands testament to the dedication and hard work displayed by everyone involved in this great endeavor.

Most importantly, I would like to congratulate and thank YOU, our members. You are the center of gravity of this organization and you are our purpose.  As a member of Dryhootch you belong to something unique and innovative - an organization with no model to follow.  Each of your are PATHFINDERS, showing how we, as a society, have taken lessons learned about caring, trust, honor, and community and have spun that into a progressive group with one goal – never leave anyone behind.

Our mission becomes harder from here.  As the war in Iraq comes to a close and as our troop level commitments in Afghanistan begin to wane our stage becomes smaller.  While we are all anxiously waiting to welcome home the last of our brothers and sisters, we must be prepared to dig in and remind our communities and our leaders that while the war is over in those places and for them, it goes on inside of each of us.  Our resolve must not fade nor can our relevance.  We must continue to move forward, quickly.  Our collective challenge now becomes learning how we can take these lessons of war, of hardship, of loss, of personal growth, and experience and turn them into opportunity?   We have spent billions of dollars in treasure and countless thousands of lives.  There must be a return on our national investment.  What that return will look like is up to us...

Think.  We now have a base of leadership and experience in our young citizens that our nation has not seen in decades.  We have a population that appreciates the sacrifice made by that base.  Not since WWII have we had such an opportunity.  Open your history books and you will see that the post WWII days were some of the most explosive in our country’s history – our modern infrastructure stands as a visual reminder to those days.

The world is ours.  Together, our future is bright.

Thank you all again for your support and dedication.

Together!

Jeff